Editors' Review

Mozilla Firefox is a popular Web browser available on a variety of platforms. Its code DNA reaches back to the dawn of the World Wide Web and has shaped other software and software companies, including The Tor Project (Windows, Android, Mac), the Opera browser (Windows, Android Mac) Adobe Acrobat (Windows, Android, Mac, iOS) Oracle, and Logitech.

Pros

Battery-friendly video streaming: We tested video streaming on both Firefox and Chrome. While Chrome usually provides smoother page scrolling, Firefox surprisingly pulled ahead when it came to CPU power consumption with HD videos on YouTube, one of the most popular browsing activities. This power consumption has a direct effect on how long your battery lasts, and on the likelihood of a laptop fan noisily kicking in to keep your PC cool.

Easy reading thanks to smooth text scrolling: On a text-heavy Web page, Firefox does a better job than Google Chrome (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS) at making vertical scrolling scale to your Windows mouse settings. While the default scroll speed is relatively slow, Firefox has a lot more steps between "not enough" and "way too much." Text-heavy webpages also tend to glide up and down more smoothly in response to your mouse wheel movements, which makes it easier for your eye to track where you are on a page. However, Chrome still scrolls more smoothly on media-heavy pages.

Highly customizable interface navigation: Mozilla introduced a UI overhaul in November 2013 that didn't go over very well. Among other things, the standard menu design was replaced with a "hamburger" button that opened to reveal a number of icons. On the bright side, Mozilla gives developers deep access into modifying Firefox's behavior, and one of them quickly introduced Classic Theme Restorer, which ended up giving Firefox the most user-customizable interface of any browser on the market, even three years later. With Classic Theme Restorer, the bookmarks button doesn't have to look (confusingly) like a clipboard; you can tell at a glance which custom search engine you have loaded; and you can freely mix design elements from both the "classic" UI and the overhaul.

Cons

Underwhelming performance on media-heavy Web pages: Embedded videos, animated images, and large static images have become a very popular way for both advertisers and content creators to reach their audiences. But this rich-media environment takes its toll on a Web browser that can't load all that data smoothly. Chrome feels prepared for this evolution, while Firefox arguably requires an ad blocker to prevent chunky scrolling and delayed loading of different sections on the page. (Firefox on Android fares much better in this department.) Basically, Chrome feels optimized for visual elements, while Firefox feels optimized for reading.

Mozilla has committed to finally replacing the Gecko page rendering engine with a new one called Quantum, but the company doesn't expect to make it available until the end of 2017.

Sync requires managing another account: With Google Chrome, you can log in to your Google account (which you already have if you use Gmail or subscribe to YouTube channels), and it will pull in your bookmarks, add-ons, and themes from any other device where you've used the Chrome browser with that Google account. With Firefox, you need to create a separate Firefox account, which you won't use anywhere else. Thankfully, though, the login screen works just fine with password managers like LastPass (Chrome desktop, Firefox desktop, iOS, Android).

Bottom Line

Though it needs some initial setup to perform smoothly, Firefox is a robust and trustworthy browser.

Publisher's Description

+

From Mozilla:
Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser. Firefox includes pop-up blocking, tab-browsing, integrated Google search, simplified privacy controls, a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.

Works well, forgiving. nifty addons, private browsing and does not keep history Tracks like Google does. Choose your search engine (google. bing and more). It is Tailor made so you can modify it to your liking. It updates and keeps you safe on line (It has its own Virus protector it stopped a Bitcoin ransom ware) and a popup blocker and it updates clean and quickly, about once ever 2 months. It does not give you the nag screen that Google has now - telling you to update your OS. for. Firefox does nor care what OS you use.

Cons

Support could be better. not that I ever needed it just a bit of leaning curve had me a little confused, It could startup faster and that is all. I did not like their media player but a few clicks I had that solved. Naturally it woks faster and a lot better on a newer OS, but I have Vista desktop and it works great and 2 lap tops with 7 and 10 and all like Firefox and I like it .I use google too on my Window 7..

Summary

If you are put off by Google and Edge and Chrome and if Windows explorer leaves you with a bad taste. Give Firefox a try, you may like it and not look back, Don't like it ? It uninstalls clean. Thunderbird to, also by Mozilla, is also a great email package.

I have 3 newer computer all on Windows 10 and they run just fine on Chrome and Edge. With Firefox they are slow, hang up and scrolling is horrible even with smooth scroll. I just tried the newest version and uninstalled after 2 or 3 days. I have HD Comcast TV and can watch all channels online perfect with Chrome. With Firefox the voice and picture are out of sync. Internet runs 125.

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